


Every Time You Kissed Me

by Hana_Noiazei



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Character Death, Death, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22510639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hana_Noiazei/pseuds/Hana_Noiazei
Summary: It’s been fifty years since Henrik lost the only one he’s ever loved. Since then, he has lived life quietly and grieving still, awaiting the day he can join his deceased darling.
Relationships: Denmark/Norway, Denmark/Norway (Hetalia)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Every Time You Kissed Me

The sky is the colour of blood.

The setting sun stains the clouds around it with shades of russet and rose, bathing Stellan’s joyful countenance in a soft golden glow. Less beautifully, it clashes with the silver engagement ring on his fourth finger, but Henrik barely notices. “I love you,” he says for what feels like the millionth time.

Next to him, Stellan rolls his eyes. “You said that five minutes ago.”

“But I do!” He hinders their journey home even more by grabbing Stellan round the waist and brings his hand to his lips, kissing the engagement ring that promises a happy marriage. “I love you so much I could never stop saying it. I love you so much that just getting married ain’t enough to show it.”

Smiling (neither of them can keep a straight face for long), Stellan presses their foreheads together, and Henrik feels the butterfly-like flutter of his eyelashes against his cheekbone, soft and fleeting. “I love you too, you sentimental idiot.”

He smiles and swoops in to kiss his lover. “Oh, I still can’t believe it. Engaged at twenty, to the loveliest man I’ve ever known!” And it’s true — Henrik feels as though he’s about to burst with happiness.

“You don’t care about the people who will tut at us?” Stellan asks, “the people who will say we’re too young to be married?”

“Who cares about what other people say?” Henrik laughs, his face aching with the smiles that it’s been tasked to show. “The only words I want to hear are those from you.”

Stellan laces their fingers together and drags him down the street, past flickering streetlamps and chipped picket fences, drags him on the familiar path home. “One day, my darling, all that sappiness you exude is going to kill me. I’m going to be overwhelmed by how sweet and charming you are, and I’m going to drop down dead.”

Henrik nearly trips over a crack in the pavement as he struggles to keep up. “Those are _mighty_ bold words for someone who just called me ‘darling’.”

“Would you rather I call you something else?”

“Please don’t,” Henrik says, “I’d listen to you call me your darling for the rest of time, if I could.”

“Just walk, won’t you?” Stellan pushes him lightly. “The walk home was supposed to take fifteen minutes, and we’ve been ditherin’ for thirty. I just want to take a nice, hot bath and fall asleep in my lovely fiancé’s arms, if you please.”

“Your lovely fiancé?” Henrik repeats, grinning goofily, “tell me about him. He’s way hotter than me, right?”

“Well, if you insist,” he snorts, stepping on the last crossroad before they reach home, “my fiancé is - “

It happens so quickly Henrik can’t even process it.

Everything seems to pass by in a blur. Before he knows it, Henrik is in bed, the night freezing cold and the other half empty.

He doesn’t remember much of what happened in the evening. But he remembers a truck, a murderer, screeching to a halt on the road; he remembers Stellan collapsing on the rough tar road, as light as a falling leaf; he remembers the life fading out of his lover’s beautiful blue eyes, the last breath escaping from lips that were about to laugh.

He remembers falling to his knees, screaming and screaming and SCREAMING until he could scream no more, palms rubbed raw against the rough asphalt of the pavement as his eyes refused to tear away from the sight of Stellan, his Stellan, his beloved, lying dead on the road like a stricken animal, cruelly torn from him just a few steps away from home.

…

The afternoon is alive.

Outside Henrik’s kitchen window, the early summer breeze stirs chartreuse leaves in a psychedelic little dance, playing with golden sunlight and bending it into pretty patterns. At the corner of his kitchen counter, his radio plays some sort of happy-go-lucky song. Henrik resists the urge to throw his dish-towel at it.

The last of his few plates are dried, and Henrik slides the stack into his cupboard. The radio crackles, blaring, “and now for the weather forecast, folks, this May seventeenth is a lovely summer’s day, sunny with not a _chance_ of rain! You might want to stock up on the sunscreen, too.”

This time Henrik _does_ throw the dish-towel at his radio, sighing with all the exhaustion and world-weariness of your typical middle-aged man. He closes the curtains and blocks out the glaring sunlight, remembering that his car needs washing and groans to himself.

Twenty years ago, Henrik would find these mundane chores enjoyable. But twenty years ago, Stellan was alive and would flick soap suds at him, spray at him with their garden hose and chase him through the house with his feather-duster. 

Today being Stellan’s birthday only adds insult to injury.

For the fifteen birthdays he got to celebrate with Stellan, Henrik would always bake him some sort of cake (or bought one), sloppily ice it, and bring it to school with him. The entire class would share the cake, Stellan would get the biggest slice and Henrik would always deliver his birthday present with a simple hug - or, when they started going steady, a kiss.

No more cakes now, no more hugs or kisses, no more company. At Henrik’s job, the same old spot at a publishing agency he’s been working at since he was eighteen, a few of his old friends pat him on the shoulder when they see him. On such a Sunday afternoon, alone and wondering why he even bothers, he wants to see people, although they are not the one he wants to see.

When night falls, and he cannot sleep, Henrik walks out to his little garden. It is still impeccable, of course, but soulless and dead. He uprooted his favourite hyacinth plants a week after Stellan died, his lover’s beloved twinflower patch a month after that. In its place are boring-looking flowers Henrik never bothered to learn the names of - their only purpose is to make the garden look normal.

At the corner of his garden is a small lamp, and he switches it on, staring listlessly at the harsh glow that leaves spots dancing before his eyes. Not long after, a moth flutters to perch on top of the lamp, its eye-spotted wings quivering just slightly. Memories of Stellan rush back, of his lover, youthful and happy, holding a moth in his delicate, porcelain hand, quipping about how the moth’s thin little legs tickle, before shaking his hand and releasing it into the night.

Henrik leans forward to turn off the lamp. Tears run down his cheeks, and he hurriedly reaches up to wipe them away. Unable to bear the memories the garden brings him, he hurries indoors and braces himself for another night of fitful sleep.

…

In the middle of a spring-cleaning session one day, bones already creaking with the too-early signs of age, Henrik dodges a heavy, leather-bound book that falls from his shelf. Cursing the way his hips pop, he picks up the tome and realises that it is no book, but a photo album.

And though his mind screams for him not to, Henrik surrenders to his nostalgic, over-emotional side and opens the album.

Each photo inside is neatly labelled, even though there are not many of them. The first one, he recognises, was taken when he and Stellan were ten years old, grainy and monochrome. But he can see the grins on their faces, and their arms around each other, and their run-down schoolhouse beside them. He turns the page.

The next photo, as the date tells him, was taken exactly forty years ago, and shows the two of them at the beach, in garish swimwear and faces caked with sand. Henrik chuckles at his twelve-year-old self, hair a wind-tossed mess and one hand pinching Stellan’s cheek. Oh, how happy they were.

The third photo is of their last year in high school, a cut-out from their yearbook, of them holding each other and not looking at the camera. The little caption underneath reads, “ _Henrik Dansen and Stellan Dahl - Cutest Couple_ ”.

Henrik can barely keep a straight face as he flips through the rest of the album, filled with snapshots of when he was happy and content, when he had someone to hold and love. At the very last page, the thirteenth photo, is a small strip of film holding four photos. And he can tell, from their bright smiles and how they wave their hands to show the pretty little bands around their fourth fingers, the photos were taken the day he proposed to Stellan, after a dream-like date and inside a dingy little photo booth. 

Silly young not-yet-adults, they were, blissfully unaware of their horrible fates.

He slams the album shut, sniffles and shoves it at the very back of his shelf, behind old magazines from who-knows-when and old novels he’s given up on reading.

And he continues to clean.

…

It appears to be one of those mornings, those mornings where he feels too weary to get out of bed and is content with nestling in the comfort of his pillows and staring at nothing.

The bedroom is stuffy and warm, the heated air of summer turning the room into what feels more like a sauna. But inside, Henrik feels cold, stretching out on his impossibly large bed. Even after fifty years, being the only occupant of his bed feels strange.

He is aware of how his old bones creak more than usual, the way his vision is blurrier than usual, how his heart beats a little slower than it did yesterday. Henrik sighs, a rattling breath pushed out from failing lungs. And he wishes, probably for the millionth time, that he could trade places with Stellan, to be the one run over on the streets instead of the one slowly ageing.

Outside the open window, Henrik can see, at the corner of his vision, the road where he lost Stellan, scrubbed clean of the terrible event that occurred there when he was young. But the sunlight is too bright; it hurts his eyes. He looks away.

With one trembling, brittle-boned hand, Henrik runs his thin-skinned fingers over the cool, varnished wood of his bedside table. A layer of dust gathers at his fingertips. His hand bumps against a metal photo frame. Henrik picks it up, his hand straining.

His old eyes struggle to figure out what’s in the photograph, before it hits him - it’s him and Stellan, as most of their photos are, pink-cheeked and young - they couldn’t have been older than sixteen - and smiling toothily. Henrik raises one hand to touch his wizened, wrinkled face. That all seemed like an eternity ago.

Oh, how he misses Stellan! Henrik squeezes the frame with what’s left of his strength, feeling the sun-warmed metal bite into his skin. How he longs for his young darling of a lover, snatched away by the cruel claws of the monster that is fate.

He wants to cry, but he cannot. Instead, Henrik simply lets the photo frame fall onto his lap, sinking into his blanket. His eyes flutter. He leans back into his pillow, feeling so small and tired.

_Henrik._

The voice makes his eyes open. In a feeble voice, rough with disuse, Henrik rasps, “what?”

_It’s me, my darling. Don’t you remember?_

How could he forget? Wondering if he is hallucinating, Henrik rasps, again, “Stell?”

A little snicker. He hasn’t heard it in half a century. _Who else would it be, silly?_

His voice breaks. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Despair creeps into Stellan’s voice. _So have I. But we won’t have to, not for long._

“What do you mean?”

_My darling._ The endearment, so sweet, so loving, brings tears springing up. _I can finally see you again. I’ve waited fifty years to be able to do this._

And Henrik understands. “Is it time to go?”

_You’re right._ And Stellan appears, as young and beautiful as he was when he died, as though in a mirage. He kneels down in front of Henrik, caresses his face with smooth, gentle hands, and suddenly Henrik feels as though he is twenty years old again, a shallow young man deeply in love. 

_My dear._ He smiles. _My sweetheart._ Stellan brushes his thumb over Henrik’s lips. _My one and only._ Henrik laughs, a fragile, hacking sound that sounds more like a cough. _My love, my love, my love. Join me, please._

“Of course I will.” Henrik can count his heartbeats, every weak thump of his chest. His breathing is beginning to slow. “I’ll join you.”

_I love you, Henrik._ Stellan’s gentle smile, his lovely frame, along with the rest of Henrik’s bedroom, is rapidly fading. _I’ll see you there._

“I love you too, Stell.” Henrik smiles back, even though it hurts to do so.

The last thing he feels before everything fades to black are Stellan’s lips, feather-light and gentle, brushing over his forehead in one last kiss.


End file.
